It's hard! times! for Hugh Hefner, the world's most recognizable epicure of biped bunnies. With that in mind, Playboy TV's tapped zig/Chicago to help launch its first-ever programming promo campaign.

Under the tagline "A better reality awaits," each ad depicts a formulaic reality TV trope that could do with a little bit of Hef-style debauchery. For some reason though, they feel less party-at-the-mansion and more like Wild On.

I know Playboy needs to walk that line between cutting-edge and soft porn, but it's doing more brand-tarnishing than brand-polishing here. Random party shots of the Mansion in Entourage and Sex and the City probably do more for the company image than these knee-jerk knockoffs of network TV.

New York Mets base-grabber Jose Reyes makes an appearance in "Instinct Fast," a new spot for sports label Under Armour.

Put together direct-to-client by Shilo, the piece is sober, slow-moving and taut. Its objective is to promote the Heater lightweight cleat to aficionados of baseball, a word we never hear independently of "steroids" anymore.

Under Armour's carved a niche for itself as the athletic label with a flair for the theatrical, but bon mots from Shilo creative Noah Conopask suggest the vibe's infectious: "We wanted it to feel like a battle, where Jose and the pitcher both had their fingers on the trigger. We wanted you to see it in their eyes, in their body language, and we wanted to subtract everything out of the world they were in, no bleachers, no fans, no scoreboard, only the moment..."

Since you're probably a postmodern hipster, it's highly likely you love yourself some Flight of the Conchords.

Well, that's cool, we do too.

To promote Season 2 of the show, HBO partnered with Deep Focus to launch the Flight of the Conchords Lip Dub Video Fansterpiece. It's about as grand as it sounds, and one-time creators of fan fiction will probably relish the opportunity to reinterpret FotC's "Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros" with their own wincey music videos.

According to Deep Focus, Facebook outreach generated about 470 comments and about 5400 "likes." The two top videos were edited into a single mumbo-jumbo one and incorporated into a Flight of the Conchords ep -- and yeah, that's on cable TV, man.

To the disturbingly appropriate Eat My Bear by YUKSEK,* a slow-moving chameleon changes his stripes according to whatever shade of Wayfarers is set in his path -- and there are some pretty ugly options to choose from. Easter egg blue! Cammo! But in the context of watching nature in action, as opposed to destroying our fine facial aesthetic, those shades suit us just fine.

Remember this? No? Perhaps it was the distracting imagery that took your attention away from the product advertised in the ad. Something about really big, fake breasts as a metaphor for the increasing fake-ish world we live in and how wonderful and counter to that are New York Fries.

Yea, big breasts selling stuff. Who knew?

Well now we have an Elvis impersonator attempting to draw the same metaphor albeit in a much less curvaceous manner. Does it work? Do you care?

Levi's has partnered with Dazed & Confused for a window display competition. This is for the Carnaby Street store in London. In the event that your blood, sweat and tears make it to the store window, your work will be featured in the June issue of Dazed & Confused, and you'll also win a token, if paltry, 501 pounds.

"Smart Play" illustrates Cosmote's melodic marriage of mobile, landline and internet with a three-part orchestra whose only instruments are phones and laptops.

Pretty nifty. Fun fact: a team of musicians wrote the score specifically for this ad. It's an amiable watch, and the tagline wraps it up nice n' easy: "The most harmonic combinations of mobile, landline phone and internet on the go."

Remember Gary Brolsma, the Numa Numa Guy? Of course you do. Hoping to tie his lovable lip-syncing magic to a big brand, The Martin Agency tapped him to produce "Numa Numa Guy with GEICO," an amateur-style vid where he sings Somebody's Watchin' Me while GEICO's trademark gecko dances behind him.

What makes the video awesome is you don't really notice the gecko at first. But as you acclimate to the context, suddenly you're like... "WTF is that thing in the terrarium, shimmying in the background?"

The team at Truth is at it again with Infect 2009, flanked by a guerrilla team called the Infectors. In a set of five ads, two charismatic but prickly MTV hosts -- which join Truth in battle -- invade ordinary spaces with 100 Truth warriors at beck and call. Their objective is to illustrate some of the egregious claims tobacco industry executives have made over the years.

See "Gummy Bears." Uh, diggin' how they're still using quotes from the late '90s.